


3:46 am

by softnow



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Vignette, season 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-20
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-06-30 03:59:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15743823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softnow/pseuds/softnow
Summary: night thoughts.





	3:46 am

**Author's Note:**

> you know that feeling when you stay somewhere new for the first time and are the only one awake in the middle of the night and nothing seems real? yeah.

He lies awake for a long time. Familiar streetlights cast unfamiliar patterns on the ceiling, and he wants to memorize them. Wants to imprint them on his bones like photo negatives so he recall them next week, next month, next year.

He's slept in this bed before, but never sober. He's never noticed the little fleur-de-lis on the sheets, or the truly excessive amount of blankets. One thick blanket would do the job. But one thick blanket wouldn't feel as safe as three thin ones. Strength in numbers.

The clock on the nightstand blinks red. He's used to green this time of night. Green fish tank, anemic green glow of his plastic Casio.

Green for go. Red for stay.

There is a truck backing up outside, but distantly. Quieter than the rumble-thump of the garbage truck that empties his dumpsters every week.

He listens for the sound of a too-loud tv down the hall, for people talking in thick early-morning voices beneath the window, for these audio landmarks that have soothed and grated him in equal measure for years. On the road, from his apartment—these sounds are universal invariants. Except, apparently, when they aren't.

There are different sounds here. Soft sounds. Blink-and-you'll-miss-it sounds. The hum of the air conditioner. The occasional muted thunk of a single ice cube being born. The butterfly rasp of cotton on skin. And, of course, the distant beep-beep-beep of that truck backing up, his last, best tether to the outside world, proof that life has continued to exist, that he hasn't slipped the time-stream and ended up in some alternate reality.

He is Alice and this is his Tugley Wood. He is afraid to close his eyes, afraid that when he opens them, the potion will have worn off. He doesn't want the potion to wear off. He wants to trade in his passport for permanent citizenship in this exotic land where the volume is turned down low and the shadows stretch long and foreign across the foot of the bed.

Beneath the covers—a sheet, a comforter, the three thin blankets—a tiny foot brushes his calf, and he thinks _mome rath_ , thinks _point the way_ , thinks _I will follow you anywhere, just show me how_.

She shifts like she can hear his thoughts, rolls towards him across a sea of linen and down, his tour guide in the strange quiet dark. Her body presses into his, seal-slick and bare. The weight of her on his arm is familiar and entirely new. How many times has he held her, supported her? But never like this. Never dressed only in the salt of his sweat and hers.

Outside, the truck reaches its destination and falls silent. His last, best tether—severed. He turns and buries his face in her hair, wraps his arms around her narrow waist. He'll take his chances here.


End file.
